“The captain's common sense is infallible,” answered Staniford. He was ashamed to know that the beautiful young girl was as improperly alone in church as she would have been in a café, and he began to hate the European world for the fact. It seemed better to him that the Aroostook should put about and sail back to Boston with her, as she was,--better that she should be going to her aunt in South Bradfield than to her aunt in Venice. “We shall soon be at our journey's end, now,” he said, after a while. “Yes; the captain thinks in about eight days, if we have good weather.” “Shall you be sorry?” “Oh, I like the sea very well.” “But the new life you are coming to,--doesn't that alarm you sometimes?” “Yes, it does,” she admitted, with a kind of reluctance. “So much that you would like to turn back from it?” “Oh, no!” she answered quickly. Of course not, Staniford thought; nothing could be worse than going back to South Bradfield. “I keep thinking about it,” she added. “You say Venice is such a very strange place. Is it any use my having seen Messina?” “Oh, all Italian cities have something in common.” “I presume,” she went on, “that after I get there everything will become natural. But I don't like to look forward. It--scares me. I can't form any idea of it.” “You needn't be afraid,” said Staniford. “It's only more beautiful than anything you can imagine.” “Yes--yes; I know,” Lydia answered. “And do you really dread getting there?” “Yes, I dread it,” she said. “Why,” returned Staniford lightly, “so do I; but it's for a different reason, I'm afraid. I should like such a voyage as this to go on forever. Now and then I think it will; it seems always to have gone on. Can you remember when it began?” “A great while ago,” she answered, humoring his fantasy, “but I can remember.” She paused a long while. “I don't know,” she said at last, “whether I can make you understand just how I feel. But it seems to me as if I had died, and this long voyage was a kind of dream that I was going to wake up from in another world. I often used to think, when I was a little girl, that when I got to heaven it would be lonesome--I don't know whether I can express it. You say that Italy--that Venice--is so beautiful; but if I don't know any one there--” She stopped, as if she had gone too far. “But you do know somebody there,” said Staniford. “Your aunt--” “Yes,” said the girl, and looked away. “But the people in this long dream,--you're going to let some of them appear to you there,” he suggested. “Oh, yes,” she said, reflecting his lighter humor, “I shall want to see them, or I shall not know I am the same person, and I must be sure of myself, at least.” “And you wouldn't like to go back to earth--to South Bradfield again?” he asked presently. “No,” she answered. “All that seems over forever. I couldn't go back there and be what I was. I could have stayed there, but I couldn't go back.”